Germany today is widely regarded as the most powerful country in Europe. But it is often reluctant to take the lead. This hesitance has much to do with the foundations of German power—Berlin has considerable resources but also faces considerable constraints. Most importantly, German power is embedded in the European Union, which both enhances and confines the country’s capability to be a foreign policy player.

And on security, Berlin depends on its Western allies, especially the United States. But as the United States is reducing its footprint in Europe, Germany needs to step up its game.

German power rests primarily on the country’s economic strength. In terms of gross domestic product (GDP), Germany ranks fourth in the world, behind the United States, China, and Japan, and ahead of France and the United Kingdom. Thanks to its economic weight, Germany is a global player, a role it exercises, for example, through its membership in the G8 group of leading economies. This gives the country status, influence, and a certain independence in its decisionmaking.

Germany has come through the global financial crisis in better shape than most European countries. It expects healthy economic growth in years to come, and the official GDP growth forecast for 2014 is 1.75 percent. With its solid manufacturing base and many “hidden champions”―globally successful small and medium-sized businesses―the German economy has drawn worldwide admiration, despite regular criticism of its strong emphasis on exports.

Geography also contributes to German power. Situated in the middle of Europe, the country lies at a crossroads of trans-European flows of goods and people, between Central Europe and Western Europe, between Scandinavia and the Mediterranean. Germany has strong economic, social, and political ties with all its neighbors. It is ideally placed to play a mediating role between the different political, social, and economic views and attitudes in Europe.

Because of its size―the result of a number of wars and a peaceful reunification in 1990―Germany is big enough to play in the European premier league. But at the same time, it is too small and too weak to dominate the continent. Germany’s power depends on its ability to get along with its European neighbors and to cooperate closely with them.

Embedded in the EU

The European Union, shaped mainly by Germany and France, provides the mechanism through which Germany interacts with its neighbors and brings different interests and views together. As long as German power is embedded in the EU, it is acceptable to Berlin’s European partners. EU countries share the same basic norms, and officials from all member states work together with their counterparts from other countries. Member states are closely involved in issues that in the past were purely domestic affairs of others. A network of cooperation spans the continent, reducing the relevance of national borders and providing an abundance of the most important resource in international relations: mutual trust.

Being integrated into the EU protects Germany from the ever-present threat of geopolitical isolation―what former German chancellor Otto von Bismarck once described as the “nightmare of coalitions” directed against Germany. From German unification in 1871 until the middle of the twentieth century, European politics were characterized by increasing competition among great powers of roughly the same size, driven by an ambition to dominate others and a fear of being conquered. Germany was at the center of this geopolitical struggle and, in two world wars, tried to reshape the political order in Europe, with devastating results.

Today, the continent’s central power is a key anchor of geopolitical stability in Europe, thanks to the European integration project, developed under benign U.S. hegemony. Because German power now flows through the channels of review and revision by its European partners, this strength has lost its former threatening character.

The EU not only limits German power, it also enables it, providing an opportunity for Germany to play an important role in shaping European and global politics by multiplying its own weight. If Berlin can assert its position within the EU, that position receives the backing of a potentially powerful union of 28 states, among them two classical great powers, France and Britain. To effectively assert its position, Germany needs to use its weight smartly by integrating the interests of key partners early in the decisionmaking process and by winning allies for its own views.

A Culture of Pacifism

German power is further confined by political mentalities: German society has a profound aversion to all things military. The deep-seated, popular view that the use of force is almost always wrong puts German leaders in a difficult position and places clear limits on Berlin’s foreign policy.

Although Germany participated in the NATO-led operation in Afghanistan that began in 2001, that intervention appears to have hardened, not softened, Germany’s pacifist outlook. In 2011, Berlin refused to take part in a military campaign in Libya, a move that looked like a rebuff of its key Western allies, the United States, France, and Britain. And while Paris and London were pushing for a harder EU line against the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Berlin preferred to apply the brakes, apparently afraid of a process that might end in the use of force.

Ultimately, Germany depends on its Western allies for its security. But these allies expect the country to share some of the burden, including by participating in military operations abroad. Berlin cannot afford to frustrate Washington, London, and Paris too much, or else they might one day conclude that their security alliance is of little use and cut down on their investments. The way for Berlin to resolve this dilemma between internal and external demands is usually to support its allies in ways other than by participating in combat operations.

For traditional powers such as the United States, France, or Britain, the use of force remains a legitimate instrument in their foreign policy toolbox. Germany, by contrast, is not going to consider military intervention abroad in the foreseeable future as a means of achieving any of its foreign policy goals.

The country’s dependence on its allies on defense matters limits Berlin’s power in significant ways. As a consequence of its economic weight, Germany plays in the global political league. But at the same time, it is reliant—more so than most G8 members—on alliances with other Western powers, first and foremost through NATO.

This situation is not going to change anytime soon. According to the agreement between the parties of Germany’s current coalition government, the transatlantic alliance “is and remains the central foundation of our security and defense policy.” There is no desire in Germany to become more independent on military matters.

It follows that Germany’s actions, especially in global politics, are always checked against the risk of endangering this underlying security arrangement. In that regard, the Cold War relationship between the United States and Germany is still alive. What remains unclear is whether Washington will see this relationship as beneficial enough to justify continued investment in it in the future.

The Antipower as a Leader?

Unlike most classical or traditional powers, Germany has no national narrative to back up an active mission in the world. Germans neither see themselves as defenders of universal values or a civilizing mission nor have a sense of superiority that would justify dominance over others.

Since World War II, Germany has developed something quite different: the notion that it is an antipower. The country has built its political identity and its political system on the concept of being the opposite of the Nazi state. Germans today see the Nazi regime, among other things, as a radicalized form of classical power politics—something that they consider themselves lucky to have left behind.

Yet Germany’s rejection of traditional ideas of power should not prevent the country from taking the lead. The United States seems increasingly unwilling to invest in European security and carry out crisis management operations in Europe’s neighborhood. On a range of new challenges from the Syrian civil war to a new geopolitical competition with Russia in Europe’s East, Europeans need to find a new approach. It is clear that a large part of that approach needs to be developed in Berlin.

Without a strong and assertive Germany, there can be no strong and assertive EU in the world. And without a more self-confident EU, the liberal global order―built and underpinned for decades by the United States―might not be sustainable. Germany must start to invest more in an order from which it has benefited so much over the decades.

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Christian Schulz

March 16, 201411:46 pm

I wouldn't call it "Culture of Pacifism" but rather "Fundamental Anti-Militarism". The Bundeswehr was established and sold to the German public as purely defensive, meaning the internationally accepted notion of military force as tool for foreign policy was explicitly and thoroughly rejected by German authorities and this attitude towards the armed forces has hardened over the decades. In combination with the self-induced strategic illiteracy of the German politicians and the "Culture of Subservience" of the German Generals (who remain passive and refrain from offering advise on military affairs out of the perception that they'd only cause political problems if they did) this forms the "Grand Deadlock" of German military affairs: the politicians lack the mindset, the arguments and the means to break the public’s refusal to sanction military force for anything but self-defense while the Generals remain silent out of misplaced loyalty, career-orientation and a culture that fundamentally questions their right to offer advise to politicians and promotes timidity and subordination of military requirements to calm and sleepiness in the domestic arena.

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Mindf*cker

March 21, 20145:00 am

'Today, the continent’s central power is a key anchor of geopolitical stability in Europe, thanks to the European integration project, developed under "benign" U.S. hegemony.' I wholeheartedly disagree because the U.S. has done all it could to "steal" Nazi Germany's spoils of war and effectively give criminals back their jobs (Gehlen, von Bolschwing, Barbie, Schwend, Skrozeny, etc), which significantly changed American and European Cold War foreign policy revving it up for friction between East and West and North and South. Above all, thank you "America" for training the Muslim Brotherhood, for building your empire on crack, for pioneering human rights abuses, after all it doesn't need to worry about picking up the tab given its geographical isolation, we already do so here with instances like "The Rigby beheading". In addition, Great Britain only finished paying off its last Marshall Plan instalment in 2001. And then the other paragraph that greatly troubles me is this one: 'The deep-seated, popular view that the use of force is almost always wrong puts German leaders in a difficult position and places clear limits on Berlin’s foreign policy.' This is clearly malarkey as even Konrad Porzner, president of the BND, back in 1994, after a Lufthansa Boeing 737 flying from Moscow to Munich was found carrying a small package with radioactive plutonium and lithium 6 for hydrogen bombs, lied in public about having anything to do with these kinds of deals. Obviously transgressing the 1990 ultimative law against transferring war materiel is not enough to shut down this German-shepherd "state within a state". Politics is just a smokescreen.

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Julio Arroyo

March 25, 20142:51 am

I deeply wish that the statements in the text correspond to reality. But I also think that the picture that is portrayed has been left out some nostalgic extremisms, which have some political importance though maybe not electoral one, the significant imbalances of all kinds between East and West Germany, and some speech vindicating virtues of German, in opposition to idle in southern Europe, with its aroma of ethics protestante.Una Germany as presented to us would be very desirable, but I think they should be accompanied by changes in the discourses and mentalities.

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Omerli

March 26, 20146:32 am

There are good historical reasons for Germany's caution in this sphere and I need not list them to this audience. However, nothing is permanent and there are clear red lines that could quite dramatically force a re-think by the German establishment and people. For example, should Russia push beyond Crimea and start to assert itself in Germany's neighborhood in an aggressive manner with NATO forced to respond through more than minor sanctions. Ditto if that scenario started to play itself out in the Middle East with Saudi Arabia and the GCC threatened by Russian support to Syria with Iran chipping in. In short, the current sight of a largely non, if not anti-military projection of power by Germany is contingent on the post-WWII context remaining largely unchanged. Once those dynamics change so will Germany, for now, one can quietly push for a bit miore assertiveness but one also needs to caution about being careful about one what wishes for...

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Dasi

April 02, 201412:03 am

I have a problem with term pacifism, too. German foreign policy has shown different examples. In your article you mentioned Afghanistan but don't forget Kosovo. In fact, the best wording seems to be Civilian Power as Hanns W. Maull already put it in 1990 in his well written article in Foreign Affairs.

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